Saturday, October 13, 2018

Members of the Baltimore Nonviolence Center and Baltimore
Peace Action will participate in Keep Space for Peace Week by going to the
National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Maryland from 11 AM to noon on Sunday,
October 14. Our main message will be to condemn the idea of creating a Space
Force. These are very dangerous times. We will carpool, and if
interested in joining us contact Max at 410-323-1607 or mobuszewski2001 at
Comcast dot net.

Join with the Global Network Against Nuclear Power & Weapons in
Space and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (U.S. Section)
during Keep Space for Peace Week to promote social justice and a sustainable
environment on Earth rather than a new arms race in the heavens. Donald
Trump has announced plans for a Space Force—a separate branch of the military.
Congress must make the final decision. The Los Angeles Times recently
reported that aerospace industry pressure and lobbying got Trump to announce
the Space Force. Big $$$ to be made. The industry has long said that ‘Star
Wars’ would be the largest industrial project in human history. Who will pay
for it? The industry has for years been pressuring Congress to cut
the ‘entitlement programs’ (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and what is
left of the social safety net) to pay for Star Wars. The United Nation’s Outer
Space Treaty declared in 1967 that space must be preserved for all of humanity.
The treaty needs updating to include new high-tech space weapons programs.

Image from October 10, 2018 demonstration outside the Saudi
Embassy in Washington, D.C.

I am thinking
about Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of post-colonial Congo.
Orchestrated by American and Belgian governments, his murder is sometimes
called “the most important assassination of the 20th century.” He was just
35 years old.

I am thinking
about South African intellectual Steve Biko, who was the 46th political
prisoner killed while in police custody during Apartheid — which allowed
imprisonment without trial or any type of due process. He was just 30 years old
and died of a traumatic brain injury.

I am thinking of
the fierce South African resistance leader, Chris Hani, who was shot and killed
in 1993. Hani was the second most popular leader in the country and was
murdered by a white supremacist with the support of a longtime bigoted member
of parliament.

I am thinking of
Tom Mboya of Kenya. I am thinking of Amílcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau. I am
thinking of the brilliant scholar and activist Walter Rodney of Guyana.

Of course, I am
thinking of Martin, Malcolm, and Medgar.

I am thinking of
Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner — the three young Freedom Riders who traveled to
Mississippi to register Black folk to vote. This summer, I spoke for the Andrew
Goodman Foundation and was so touched to meet his family. Fifty years later,
they are still grieving the loss.

And I am thinking
of the brave Brazilian activist Marielle Franco, gunned down in a drive-by
assassination this by March.

In many of those
cases, nobody was ever held responsible. Not legally or even in the court of
public opinion. In fact, governments around the world have participated in
targeted assassinations with little to no blowback for decades.

I think social
media, and the way it democratizes information — and confrontation — has a
chance to change all that.

ON THE AFTERNOON of Tuesday,
October 2, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi
Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to finalize some paperwork for his
upcoming marriage. Exterior security camera footage clearly shows him
entering the building. But not a single shred of evidence, from eyewitnesses or
cameras, shows him leaving. The Saudi consulate now says they don’t have any
footage from inside the building and give no explanation for why Khashoggi was
never seen leaving.

What we do know is
that Khashoggi, while careful to not call himself a dissident, was an informed
critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, and the manner
in which he manages the country. Now, according to media reports, Turkish
investigators believe that the Saudi government assassinated Khashoggi and
literally cut his body into bits inside of the consulate. As heinous as this
is, it doesn’t quite come as a surprise — for people who follow the exploits of
Saudi Arabia — considering how the government arrested and imprisoned
activists across the country.

Not a surprise,
but a new low nonetheless.

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Maybe inside the
kingdom’s bubble, the Saudi royal family didn’t really understand that we’d
find out and that we’d care. Maybe they listened to President Donald Trump
repeatedly ramble on about how the press is the enemy of the people, and they
assumed we all thought that. We don’t. And unlike previous generations,
outraged strangers around the world are connecting with one another via social
media.

In the past 24
hours, I’ve connected with various associates of Khashoggi. They are distraught
— “I met with his family to tell them that we were pretty sure Jamal had been
murdered by Saudi government — it was devastating,” Khashoggi’s friend told me.

But, even more
than that, they are ****ed — and they are determined to get to the bottom of
this. These aren’t men and women who will soon let go. Several have
emphatically said that they will make it their life’s mission to get justice
for Jamal Khashoggi.

Every journalist,
activist, organizer, and peace-loving person in the world should make that
their mission. If we don’t hold them accountable, who will? Trump? It damn sure
won’t be the American business community, who seems so pumped to cozy up with
MBS that they are willing to look past every repressive action he’s ever taken.

Social media can
be an ugly place. I see that ugliness up close every single day. But it’s also
what allowed me to identify and track down the bigots who attacked
and maimed a young man in Charlottesville, Virginia, during a white
supremacist rally. Social media brought people together to take down Bill
O’Reilly at Fox News. It forced companies to stop disseminating the callous
conspiracies of Alex Jones. When used well, it’s a powerful tool that allows an
everyday person to confront powerful brands and leaders face to face.

In Saudi Arabia,
you just can’t call out MBS without fear of being arrested or killed, but
Twitter is an irreverent medium when addressing that type of power. And that’s
a good thing.

Shaun King is a Brooklyn-based
columnist who focuses on civil and human rights, racial justice, mass
incarceration, and law enforcement misconduct. Before joining The Intercept, he
was the senior justice writer at the New York Daily News and the
writer-in-residence at Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project. shaun.king@​theintercept.com @ShaunKing

"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs